A restoration of the grand downtown hotel removes the 1980s excess and restores it to its beer-empire heyday.
More than a century ago, Adolphus Busch had big plans for Dallas. The co-founder of the Anheuser-Busch empire aimed to grow his Missouri brewing-and-distribution concern. Dallas would be the Texas hub, his first test state in what would one day grow into a national network. History on this next point is murky, but in 1910 Busch was approached by a delegation of prominent Dallas businessmen who prevailed upon him to finance the construction of a first-class hotel for a city on the make. Busch, who already owned The Oriental Hotel, on the southeast corner of Commerce and Akard, loved the idea. He purchased the site where City Hall once stood in the 1880s and spent $1.8 million (about $45 million in today’s dollars) to build a hotel befitting Dallas’ aspirations, aiming for world-class status even then.
The result, some two years later, was a structure with a quality of architectural ornamentation that was unheard of this side of the Mississippi, much less in Texas: an exemplar of the Parisian Beaux Arts style, with an exterior of tapestry brick, red and gray granite, and gargoyles flanked by the colossal, helmeted heads of Greek gods. The opulent interior was unlike anything Dallas had ever known—vaulted ceilings, sculptured panels in bas-relief, fixtures of brass, ormolu, alabaster decorated with silk and velvet draperies. Busch intended to dub the city’s crown jewel The New Oriental Hotel. Instead, he settled on the Adolphus Hotel.
